


My broken house behind me (and good things ahead)

by ageolwian



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Established Relationship, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, M/M, Neil Hargrove Commits A Hate Crime, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, POV Steve Harrington, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 22:09:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20955698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ageolwian/pseuds/ageolwian
Summary: He relives in vivid, distorted detail that time he got into it with Jonathan behind The Hawk; and when he got beaten into oblivion at the Byers’ old house; and that interrogation under duress beneath Starcourt Mall; all of them blurring together into one violent mess inside his head. Carol Vaughn holds him off the floor by his throat in Joyce Byers’ kitchen, while her boyfriend yells at her from the sidelines that he’s had enough, Carol, that he can’t breathe; the lights around them flash neon pink and blue by turns, and at some point a gang of Russians drive a Cadillac convertible through the living room wall.Carol says, ‘hey there little Stevie,’ and kisses him on the cheek.Or: Mr Hargrove’s supposed to be in Chicago all weekend.





	My broken house behind me (and good things ahead)

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone could listen to ‘This Year’ by the Mountain Goats at least once as a consequence of this reading this, that would be great. Big inspiration right there.
> 
> Also, 'Bones' by Galantis is a GREAT upbeat Steve&Robin song.

Steve doesn’t remember how he gets to the Wheelers’ house. For a while he doesn’t even know he’s there. He’s down for the count and _out-_out, adrift, hardly in his body at all. 

He comes to in someone else’s bedroom. There’s a record player to his left playing what he thinks might be The Clash, the volume turned down low.

Mike Wheeler’s there, stretched out on the floor, reading a comic of some kind.

‘Mom,’ he yells, going tense when he catches Steve’s eyes on him, and Steve goes away again, but it can’t be for long, because when comes back Karen Wheeler is gazing at him with her massive doe eyes. 

‘Hey Steve,’ she says, with a gentle smile. ‘How are you feeling?’

Steve’s not conscious long enough to reply.

*

He stays down for a long time.

He knows it’s a long time, because the light changes in between his surfacings, from warm lamp glow to colourless daybreak, phasing right on through to an afternoon sun that glares through the plaid curtains.

Mike’s sometimes there in the room. If this _is _the Wheeler house, as Steve is beginning to suspect, it’s probably his bedroom, because it sure as hell isn’t Nancy’s. There’s nowhere near enough baby pink.

It must be Mike changing the music as well, in this case. The Clash loops for a while—Steve thinks he wakes up on two separate occasions to ‘I Fought the Law’—but he definitely hears Joy Division at some point, and The Human League at another. 

Sometimes, in the shallows of sleep, he’s conscious of a profound, unabiding pain, but he can’t identify what’s happened to him and it fucking _hurts_, so he tries not to focus on it too much, which usually results in his getting swallowed back down by the deep. Once, early on, he wakes to an empty room and the sound of an argument in the hall. He manages to make out that the voices are talking about taking someone—probably him—to a hospital, so he’s probably in a fairly bad way, but that’s all he really knows.

He thinks he hears Henderson’s voice, but furred and distorted, like it’s on the radio. Mike must be talking to him on the walkie.

_He’s fine, Dustin, he’s just sleeping, _is what he wants Mike to say, because Dustin sounds really upset, but mostly what Mike’s saying is, ‘no, over,’ and ‘I don’t know, over’ and then, eventually, ‘yeah, don’t worry, Dustin, I will. Over and out.’

*

As time stretches on, he begins to dream. His mind kicks out, sending him into fever-bright basketball games, or his eerily-lit pool at night, or the Mind Flayer’s tunnels, spore-ridden and nightmarish. One time it sends him El, who shows up in the backseat of his Beamer as he drives it aimlessly through an empty, mouldering Hawkins he doesn’t even recognise from his most lonely night-time wanderings. He can see her big serious eyes staring at him in his rearview mirror, but she doesn’t stick around, which is a shame. He could’ve used the company here.

At some point his brain starts revisiting all the times he’s gotten the shit kicked out of them, like its trying to figure an explanation for the acute pain in his body. He relives in vivid, distorted detail that time he got into it with Jonathan behind The Hawk; and when he got beaten into oblivion at the Byers’ old house; and that interrogation under duress beneath the Starcourt mall; all of them blurring together into one violent mess inside his head. Carol Vaughan holds him off the floor by his throat in Joyce Byers’ kitchen, while her boyfriend yells at her from the sidelines that he’s had enough, Carol, that he can’t _breathe_; the lights around them flash neon pink and blue by turns, and at some point a gang of Russians drive a Cadillac convertible in through the living room wall. 

Carol says, ‘hey there little Stevie,’ and kisses him on the cheek. The dream twists and reforms; he turns into a gentle hand on his face, breathing in deeply. Someone’s talking to him, he realises, but it’s like he’s underwater; it’s hard to make sense of anything that passes through from the world of light and air.

‘—you in there, Steve? Hey. Open your eyes for me, if you can.’

‘Rob’n?’ He garbles out.

‘Are you actually asking, or are you just faking to get kissed again?’

Steve unsticks his eyes, squinting at the girl to his left, sitting in what looks like one of the Wheelers’ dining room chairs at his bedside.

‘You kissed me?’ He says, still completely disorientated. Isn’t Robin—doesn’t Robin— ‘But what about Tammy?’

‘It was on the cheek, dingus,’ she says, patting at one of them. She smiles at him. Her eyes are brighter than usual, more blue than grey. ‘You’re some Sleeping Beauty, Harrington. Now be a gentleman and say thank you for my kiss of life.’

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Though I feel like I’ve been awake before?’

‘A few times, yeah,’ says Robin. ‘Nancy says you’ve been in and out.’

‘’M at Nancy’s?’

‘You sure are. She’s in her room with Jonathan. You want me to go get her?’

‘No, s’okay… Who else is here?’

‘Uhh, Mr Wheeler, I think? There was someone downstairs watching television. But that might be it. Nancy let me in. She said her Mom had gone shopping—she’s gonna bring you back some chicken soup by the way, so I hope you’ve got the appetite for it.’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Steve,’ Robin says seriously. ‘You’ve been out a while. Nancy called me.’

This gives Steve a horrible feeling.

‘How long?’ He says.

‘Like, a day,’ says Robin. ‘It’s Saturday. You got here last night. Do you remember that?’

‘No,’ Steve says, his breathing a little shallow.

‘Hey, that’s fine,’ Robin says, ‘calm down.’

‘What _happened?_’

‘_Calm down_, Steve,’ she says, just as forcefully, shoving at his shoulder when he tries to sit up. 

‘Steve?’ Nancy says, from the door, Jonathan just behind her.

‘What happened, Nancy?’ Steve says immediately, not missing the dirty look Robin is giving his ex, as though it’s her fault he’s being difficult all of a sudden. ‘Why am I here? And why do I _hurt_ so much, Jesus—did we get into it again, Byers?’

‘Jonathan didn’t do anything,’ Nancy says, as Robin gets up wordlessly and leaves the room. She reappears quite promptly, holding a handheld mirror she’s clearly swiped from Nancy’s vanity. She hands it to Steve, and indicates that he should look at himself. 

He’s been in enough fights by now to know that he’s been hit in the face, and that his nose clearly bore the brunt of the impact. It’s tender and swollen to touch, a cut bisecting its bridge, and blood has clotted thickly under the surrounding skin, turning his features a deep and variegated plum. The colour is darkest in his eye sockets, and the edges of those cavities are delineated sharply by fragmentary purple rings on either side.

‘Wow,’ says Steve. ‘I look like _shit.’_

‘Uhuh, you really do. Check out your chest too, if you really wanna feel like crap.’

Steve peeks down the neck of his pyjama top, which must be someone else’s because he doesn’t recognise it, and wishes he hadn’t.

‘What _happened _to me?’ Steve says, looking around at all of them. They exchange worried glances. ‘Seriously? Guys!’

‘We don’t _know_, Steve,’ Jonathan says, and Steve snaps his eyes to him. 

‘You weren’t exactly in a fit state to explain,’ Nancy adds.

‘Oh my God,’ Steve says. He thinks he’s getting some of it now, brushes of memory incredibly faint and light-fingered in comparison to the story they’re telling him. ‘Oh my God.’ Someone smacking him to the ground, someone_ kicking_ him in the stomach as he tries to crawl away, someone shouting as they tower over him: _get up; get up, you fucking fag; get _up_._

‘Billy,’ Steve says, ‘where’s Billy?’

*

‘Okay, will you _slow down_, dingus?’ Robin says to him impatiently, following him around the room as he struggles to find clothes in Mike Wheeler’s bed-accessorised trash-heap that might remotely fit him. 

‘I gotta get outta here,’ he says, painfully pulling on a T-shirt over his red-and-purple splotched chest. 

‘Yeah, you’ve said that: like a gajillion times. You still haven’t explained why.’

‘I have to find Billy, Robin.’

Robin folds her arms. She says: ‘Is this about,’ and she widens her eyes at him expressively, moves her eyebrows up to her hair. Steve tenses, but Nancy’s gone downstairs to call the Sinclairs and Jonathan’s slunk away after her, so it’s safe to nod and go, ‘yeah. I mean, I think—yeah.’

‘Did he do this to you?’ She asks.

‘What? _No.’_

Robin seems unimpressed by the strength of his answer. ‘Jonathan said it wouldn’t be the first time,’ she persists. 

‘He didn’t—he’s not responsible for this, okay?’

‘But he does have something to do with it?’

Steve opens his mouth to respond, to make another denial, to deflect and protect, but finds he can’t. He lifts his jaw carefully, and seals his lips. 

‘Steve, you can tell me,’ Robin says earnestly, stepping right into his space, ‘why don’t you think you can tell me?’

‘I know I can,’ Steve says, swallowing. ‘It’s just—it was bad, Robin, it was really fucking—’

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Byers says awkwardly from the doorway, and Steve leaps away from their burgeoning tête-à-tête like he’s stuck a fork in the mains. ‘It’s just—there are some people who want to speak to you.’ He’s holding a walkie talkie, and Robin eyes it warily, because she’s seen Steve use one of those before.

It about explodes in his hand when Byers hands it over. ‘STEVE! You’re ALIVE! Are you okay? Scale of one-to-ten, ten being secret-Russian-base-tortured and one being, like, roughed up a little bit by demodogs. Over.’

Steve rolls his eyes, suddenly feeling much more like himself. He lifts the walkie to his mouth the way he’s been shown, and says: ‘a solid seven on that scale, Henderson.’

‘You have to say ‘over,’ Steve. Over.’

‘A solid seven, _over_,’ Steve says impatiently. He turns his back on Robin and Byers, feeling a bit self-conscious about Dustin mothering him in front of them. ‘I’m awake, I’m standing, I’m gonna have chicken soup in a bit, I think. I’m okay.’

‘Steve, you say ‘over’ when you’ve finished speaking,’ Will says mildly, because Dustin’s clearly in a radio etiquette-induced snit on the other end of the line. ‘Not in the middle of your transmission. Over.’

‘Sorry, Will. Where are you guys? Over.’

‘We’re at Lucas’,’ says Will, ‘Mrs Wheeler didn’t want all of us over there when you were trying to rest. She said we were too loud. Over.’

‘He’s been ‘resting’ for an entire day,’ comes Mike’s voice snottily in the background, ‘I should be able to noise in my own—’ he gets cut off, presumably because Will’s ended his message and let the button jump to rest.

‘All right,’ Steve says, ‘everybody okay over there? Whatcha up to?’

‘We’re playing D’n’D,’ says Max’s voice long-sufferingly.

‘Max? You’re there too?’

‘Shouldn’t I be?’ She asks, as Dustin says reproachfully, ‘Guys, you’re not saying—’

‘Max, have you heard from Billy?’

There’s radio static on the line. 

‘Why are you asking?’ Max says cautiously. ‘What’s this about?’ Then, when Steve struggles to get anything out in response, she says, ‘none of us have seen him, Steve. We’ve said it _so_ many times now. Oh my _God_, Dustin, _over_, for _fuck’s_ sake—’

‘Have people been asking? Over.’

‘A few,’ she says, cagy. ‘But he was lifting weights when we left him Friday evening and that’s the last any of us know about it. _You _probably saw him more recently than I did. Aren’t you guys joined at the hip or something? Over.’

‘What about your Dad? Over.’

‘Neil’s not my Dad,’ Max says dangerously.

‘Sorry. Is he around? Over.’

‘Yeah, he’s _around_, Steve, you wanna talk to him?’ Max says sarcastically. ‘He’s across town just now, but I could run over and get him if you like. I’m sure he’ll be up in a flash when he hears _you’re _on the walkie.’

‘That’s not necessary, thank you. Over.’

‘I’m sorry I’m not more help,’ she says, sounding guilty now. They all must know some rendition of what’s happened to Steve, and that everyone has to be super nice to him given the state of things. 

‘It’s all right. Um. What’s Neil been up to recently, can I ask?’

‘I don’t know. Reading his newspaper. Watching TV. Normal things old people do at the weekend.’

‘Is he worried about Billy?’

‘Mom says he is, in his own way.’ Steve can almost hear the eye roll. ‘Why does everyone care where he is so much anyway? It’s not even been a day, and he does this kind of thing _all the time_.’

‘Who else cares? You didn’t say.’

‘Mrs Wheeler rang the house last night wanting to know,’ Max says, ‘She was being _really _weird about it. Mike says he listened to the phone call on his end and she was, like, asking about the last time he’d been home and if he’d looked like he’d been in a fight recently. Stuff like that. And then the new _sheriff_ came over to our house, and he started asking the same kind of thing all over again. He wouldn’t tell us why.’

‘Did Billy beat you up, Steve?’ Mike asks abruptly, over the tail end of Max’s sentence.

‘Mike,’ Dustin hisses, before the line cuts out again.

‘Sorry about that, Steve,’ Dustin says, coming back on again. ‘We’re sure that if, hypothetically, you and Billy had gotten into a fight again, and one of you had to be named king over the other, _you _would definitely be the one wearing a crown this time round. You’ve gotten _so_ much better at fighting recently. Over.’

‘Thanks, man,’ Steve says wryly, ‘appreciate it. Over.’

‘Anytime. Hey, are you up to a little noise yet? Can we come over? Over.’

‘Um, I’ve kinda gotta get home,’ Steve says, looking round questingly for Robin, but he’s alone in Mike’s room. He hadn’t known both Byers and her had left.

‘What? Why? Are your parents even there? Over.’

‘Shocking as it may seem to you, Dustin, my parents _do_ sometimes come to use the house they paid money for and raised their only child in.’

‘Yeah, but are they using it right this second? Over.’

Steve pauses, because the technical answer to that question is ‘no.’ Or it was, the last time he had any clue what was going on around here.

‘Mike’s just said his Mom called them yesterday after you showed up and got the answering machine,’ Dustin says, a little smugly. ‘So they’re not actually there right this second, are they?’

Steve sighs.

‘You can’t go home like that, Steve. Has someone shown you your face yet? You need someone around to look after you. I could come over to do that, if you want. Over.’

‘I really just want to go home and sleep,’ Steve reiterates. ‘I don’t need a babysitter. Over.’

‘Yeah, but we need ours,’ Dustin said firmly, and there’s some background noise, like a few of the others have murmured in agreement. ‘So we’d really feel more comfortable about this entire situation if you had someone to go home to.’

‘Face it, Steve,’ says Max, ‘you’re not going anywhere.’

*

‘There,’ Mrs Wheeler says, as she presents him with the afore-heralded chicken soup, and Steve stares at it in wonder. He’s got a tray in his lap where he is, once again, lying prone in Mike’s bed, and it is loaded up with _everything_ he could have possibly wanted for this meal—bread, butter, a bread _and _a butter knife, cellars of salt and pepper, a teaspoon in case he can’t manage the regular-sized kind, a plate to catch drips, a tall glass of water, and—to round it all off— a napkin in a silver christening bangle, Jesus Christ.

The last time Steve was properly sick he drank a carton of out-of-date OJ from his fridge door and passed out wrapped around his ensuite's toilet bowl. This is very weird for him.

‘Thanks, Mrs Wheeler,’ he says awkwardly.

‘Oh, it’s nothing, Steve. I’m happy to do this for you.’

‘Mrs Wheeler,’ Steve starts, and rather than leaving, Mrs Wheeler sits herself down slowly in the chair Robin had been perched upon earlier. ‘What—happened?’ He asks her. ‘Last night, I mean?’

‘Nancy said you still don’t remember?’

It’s easier to shake his head ‘no.’

‘Well,’ Mrs Wheeler says, moving the tray to the floor so she can lean forward on her knees, ‘it was… about nine thirty, I guess? The kids were all over at Lucas’ playing Dragons. The Byers are in town, as I’m sure you know, so Will and El were there with the rest of them. It was the event of the _year_. Or so I was told.’ She shook her head with an indulgent smile, like Mike Wheeler’s the most precious thing to walk the earth and not a 6-foot beanpole of sulk that can talk and ride a bike. ‘Jonathan was with Nancy in her bedroom—door open, of course. Ted was minding Holly in the front room. Joyce and I were having a cup of tea in the kitchen, catching up. And… I heard a car, out front,’ she says, looking up at him. ‘We went out, Joyce and I, and it was Billy Hargrove in that Chevy of his. He had you in the passenger side, but you weren’t conscious, Steve—you about fell out of your seat when he opened the door. Jonathan had to help him get you inside the house.’

‘And then what happened?’ Steve says, his mouth dry, ‘after you got me inside?’

‘Well,’ Karen says again, sitting back in the chair again. ‘I didn’t really know what to think, if I’m honest, Steve. Once they’d got you in, Jonathan… he was a bit upset, over Billy being there. The pair of them went back out on the lawn. To be frank, Jonathan pushed him out. He was yelling at him. It wasn’t really the best side of him I’ve seen, but then Nancy was there as well and she was behaving just as badly. And Joyce was telling me—she said that… Billy might have done this to you? She said it had happened before. Is that true, Steve? Did Billy—’

‘Billy didn’t hurt me, Mrs Wheeler,’ Steve interrupts, before she can finish her question. ‘We’re friends.’

‘I did think that,’ she says, nodding. ‘That’s why, like I said, I wasn’t sure what to think.’

‘Billy’s not a bad guy,’ Steve croaks, because he’s strangely certain of the fact that she’s going to believe him. ‘It’s just—he’s got—his Dad’s a real piece of work, Mrs Wheeler,’ he says, all in a rush. ‘And I’m worried about him—Billy. Something else mighta happened while I was sleeping. Max told me Billy’s missing. She said people have been asking for him, but no one can find him.’

‘Hold on, Steve, hold on. Are you telling me Neil Hargrove did this to you?’

Steve stops in a panic. Is that what he had said?

‘Steve, I promise you, nothing you tell me will go further than it needs to.’ She puts her hand on his shoulder, and gazes at him intently with her big, earnest eyes.

Steve swallows.

‘No, Mrs Wheeler,’ he says eventually, ‘Billy and I just got into it with some guys down at the Hideaway, that’s all.’

‘Oh, Steve, honey, you’re only nineteen, you shouldn’t have—’

‘I know,’ Steve says, ‘I know. We shouldn’t have gone there. And now it’s caused all kinds of trouble. I’m sorry.’

Mrs Wheeler shakes her head, the last vestige of her disappointment that she shows, and then she’s neutral once more. ‘So,’ she says, ‘you think Billy might have gone back home after this fight happened. You think his Dad might have been angry at him.’ She’s not really phrasing her questions like questions. She’s actually taking him seriously, Steve realises.

‘Maybe? I don’t know.’

‘Okay.’ She stands up. ‘I’ll call round again,’ she says. ‘Just to see if anyone’s seen him.’

‘Mrs Wheeler, you can’t—’

‘I’ll be careful, Steve,’ she says, raising her eyebrows at him, like, _I’m a grown-ass fucking woman, tenderfoot_ and Steve shuts up. ‘You don’t need to worry—you just need to lie down. I’ll tell you if anyone has news, I promise.’ She left.

Steve stares down at his soup, and tries to tell himself that he wants to eat it.

‘You gonna tell me what’s going on now?’

Robin’s leaning in the doorway, arms crossed.

‘You heard all that?’

‘Most of it,’ she says, coming in. ‘Jonathan and Nancy tell it a bit differently, but I think I’ve got the general gist. You gonna fill me in the rest of the way?’

‘I will if you eat some of this soup for me,’ Steve sighs. ‘I’m really not hungry.’

Robin parks herself back on his visitor chair and holds out her arms for him to pass her the bowl. He does so, and she tucks into it with a kind of practical panache. Her mouth is full, so she wheels her spoon hand in the air, indicating that he should start talking. 

‘D’you remember how I told you Billy’s Dad was…’

Robin swallows. ‘A fucking ballsack? Yeah.’

‘I went to Billy’s house last night,’ Steve says, trying not to feel a current of shame course through him. ‘He—didn’t say I could, but everyone was out. I knew that. He’d said at practice that his Dad was going to Chicago for the weekend, meeting up with some old friends who were in town. He’d said he wasn’t gonna be back til Sunday night. He was real fucking happy about it. And then, after school I—’

He stops, and wipes his nose on his forearm. He’s not looking at Robin anymore, but is gazing fixedly at the curtained window. He can see clean-cut squares of light pressing at the fabric there, suggestions of the glass panes that are letting the teatime sun burn through.

Steve hears Robin set his bowl on the carpet like maybe she wants her hands free for something, and he continues hurriedly with his narrative before she can try anything, ‘I took Henderson over to Sinclair’s place. Will and El are visiting, so they were having a party or something. Max was there already, with her Mom. And, like, I’ve never even seen her Mom drop her off _anywhere_; usually it’s all Billy, but Mrs Hargrove said she was letting him have the night off for a change, and that she was heading on to see some friends for dinner or whatever the fuck Moms do in Hawkins on Friday night.’

‘So you went to go see him,’ Robin says, because she can obviously tell that Steve’s having a hard time circling back to that point.

Steve nods.

‘Did he try to make you leave?’

‘He pulled me in off the porch. He was mad, but—’ Steve cuts off. Robin _really _doesn’t need to know what he did to sweeten Billy’s mood.

‘Did you have sex?’ She says bluntly.

‘I…’ _was_ _down on my knees in the hallway_, is how that sentence actually ends, but: ‘…we hadn’t even gotten to his room.’

‘And then his Dad came home.’

‘Yeah,’ Steve manages. ‘And then his Dad came home.’

There is a long and loaded silence, and then Robin sits herself on the bed by his knees and grabs his chin between her forefinger and thumb.

‘Look at me, Harrington,’ she demands. ‘_Look _at me. You haven’t done shit. This isn’t something you’ve got to carry, all right? That dude is a grade A _ballsack,_ and if this world was just a fraction of an _inch_ kinder to people like you and—and _me,_ and fucking _Billy_, then—’ she breaks off, not just near to tears but honestly shedding a few, just like Steve is, damn it, ’—then I’d be out of prison in time to meet my little Harrington godkids after I brained Mr Hargrove with my flugelhorn. Now come the fuck here.’ And she grabs him in a hug so tight it hurts, but he doesn’t tell her to loosen her grip. He clutches her back and hides his wet eyes in her shirt.

‘What the fuck’s a flugelhorn?’ He mumbles into her shoulder, trying to get a handle on his quiet weeping.

‘It’s the biggest, heaviest instrument I know how to play,’ Robin says. ‘That I can actually _lift, _that is. I would have said my cello, but I can’t get that over my head.’

‘You could garrotte him with the strings,’ Steve suggests, and she laughs.

‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Steve,’ she says fiercely into his ear. ‘_Nothing_.’

‘Thanks,’ he says.

‘How can I help?’ Robin asks, pulling back. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘I need to get out of here,’ Steve says at once. ‘I’ve got to find Billy. I have to make sure he’s okay.’

‘You need wheels,’ Robin says, like he’s expressed himself that clearly, ‘that’s fine. I’ll get you some. I’m guessing the Beamer’s still at Billy’s?’

‘I don’t know where she is,’ Steve frets, ‘I mean, she can’t still be at Cherry, because someone was bound to have noticed her there—’

‘No big,’ Robin says. ‘I’ll find her.’ And that’s how Steve knows how invested she is in helping him with this, because she’s referring to his car using the feminine pronoun like she always usually gives him shit for. ‘Just sit tight here, yeah? Don’t do anything half-cocked. I’ll get you your car, maybe grab you some clothes so you look less like a fourteen-year-old boy—it’s gonna be fine. Eat your chicken soup.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Steve begins, but Robin’s already depositing his half-depleted bowl back in his tray, tidying it up a bit for him too, and fixing him with a stern glare.

‘Harrington, don’t be a child, eat the food that’s been made for you, or I’m not bringing you shit.’ 

Steve takes a mutinous spoonful of soup from the bowl.

‘There’s a good boy,’ Robin coos. She slings a bag on her shoulder. ‘I’ll be back in a jiff.’

She takes the stairs at such a rapid pace Steve thinks he hears her stumble, and it makes his heart swell until it feels like it’s bumping against the back of his sternum. 

*

Whatever the fuck a jiff is, Robin is not back in one. She leaves at maybe four o’clock, and she doesn’t reappear until long after the March sun has set at around eight. 

Once Mrs Wheeler’s taken his soup away (‘no news, hon,’ she updates him softly, as she lifts the tray), Nancy comes in holding a deck of cards and ask if he wants to play gin rummy. Steve’s heart clenches a bit, because she’d taught him how to play that one, back when he didn’t think a deck of cards was good for anything but a round of kings; in fact he’d only suggested she teach him gin rummy because he’d thought it might involve drinking.

Jonathan joins them once Nancy’s trounced him twice in a row and they swap to playing Old Maid for a while, after which Steve asks if he can take a shower, because he’s not sure if he’ll be expected to socialise at dinner and he’s smelling a little ripe. Jonathan helps him into the bathroom and then sits awkwardly on the toilet seat while Steve washes his livid, healing body behind the translucent curtain. Despite the indignity of it all, Steve feels much better later sitting opposite Mr Wheeler over steak-and-ale pie, even if the sour sonuvabitch never says anything anyway. 

He’s laying miserably in Mike Wheeler’s bed, wide awake when the rest of the house has long settled down to sleep, when he hears something outside. 

‘Dingus. Psst, hey _dingus_.’

Steve sits bolt upright in bed and careens over to the window, getting the base out of its jamb impatiently and shoving it up. ‘What took you so long?’ He hisses down at Robin, who is out on the front lawn with a handful more of the small projectiles he’s just heard clattering against the glass.

‘Wow, you’re welcome,’ she says, holding up his car keys and pointing them with a flourish towards the Beamer, parked triumphantly at the kerb. ‘You coming down?’

Steve can’t get descend the stairs fast enough. As he staggers off the last step he thinks he hears Jonathan stir on the living room sofa, but he manages to get through the front door without waking him.

He sprints across the lawn and goes to get into the passenger seat, because Robin’s sat herself behind the wheel, but she shakes her head and throws her thumb towards the back. ‘You’ve got to get changed,’ she says, ‘unless you wanna go on a rescue mission looking like a Mike Wheeler biggy-me.’

Steve does as he’s told. ‘Did you get these from my room?’ He asks, pulling on some familiar garments as Robin starts up the car and turns it into the road.

‘Uhuh. And your car was in the drive. Someone must have dropped it off there.’

‘Billy,’ Steve says, his heart thumping, ‘Billy would have dropped it off. He’s all right.’ The last part is more to himself, but Robin hears it anyway.

‘Maybe,’ Robin says noncommittally.

‘He was alive long enough to get me to the Wheelers’ and then go back to his house and drive my car across town,’ Steve snaps. ‘His Dad didn’t stop him either time he was at home, and we know that he hasn’t been seen there since. That says ‘all right’ to me.’

‘I’m not trying to upset you, Steve, I’m just trying to be realistic,’ Robin says. ‘In all likelihood Billy _did_ go back to Cherry Lane after he returned your BMW. Hasn’t he done that every time this has happened before? Steve,’ she prompts, looking at him in the driver’s mirror when he declines to respond. ‘Doesn’t he _always _go back?’

‘Maybe it’s different this time.’

‘What makes it different?’ Robin says. 

Steve doesn’t have an answer. In his head he hears Billy saying: _‘You have to leave,’ taking him by the arm and trying to push him towards the door._

_‘What? _No_, I’m not leaving.’_

_‘Do you hear him checking this house for goddamn witnesses? You gotta go right the fuck now, c’mon.’_

_‘I’m not _leaving_ you.’_

_‘Jesus Christ, Danny—’ Billy turns, stopping when he sees Steve’s wide eyes. ‘—Harrington,’ he finishes, awkwardly._

_‘Steve,’ Steve corrects, in a hushed voice._

_‘Steve,’ Billy agrees softly, after a pause. ‘Please. You have to go.’_

‘Nothing, I guess,’ Steve says now, to Robin. He thinks he can actually feel his heart breaking, saying _fuck it_ to this shit, giving all the way up. ‘I guess it’s not anything different at all.’

Robin continues to look at him worriedly in the mirror, but Steve’s done pursuing this train of thought. 

‘Where are we going? He says dully. 

‘Um, I thought we could try looping his neighbourhood a few times—check if we could spot anything out of the ordinary, you know? Does that sound good to you?’

‘Sure,’ Steve says, settling back into one of the seats and staring through the window. ‘That’s fine.’

*

_‘If I’m going anywhere, you’re coming with me.’_

_‘Steve, I _can’t_.’_

_‘Then I _won’t_.’_

_‘Steve—’_

_‘Sorry about that, boys,’ Mr Hargrove says from behind them. _

_Billy closes his eyes, then straightens to turn and face his father. Steve’s half in-front of him, eyeballing Neil warily, so Billy sidesteps away like he’s getting some distance, as if that will pacify whatever is coming their way. He keeps his posture loose and open, shoulders down, palms facing forward. _

_‘Dad,’ he begins, but Mr Hargrove ignores him._

_‘We haven’t officially met, I don’t think,’ he says to Steve. ‘Your name’s Harrington, isn’t it? You’re the point guard for Billy’s basketball team. I’ve seen you on the court.’_

_Steve slides a glance at Billy, asking what he should fucking do. There’s a flush creeping over Billy’s face, its colour stronger at the tips of his ears and in the meat of his cheeks. Is he angry at Steve? _

_‘Yes, sir,’ says Steve, when Billy refuses to look at him._

_‘Yes, sir, you play point guard, or yes, sir, your name’s Harrington?’_

_‘Both, sir.’_

_‘And what’s your first name, Mr Harrington?’_

_‘It’s… it’s Steve, sir.’_

_‘Steve,’ Mr Hargrove says, like he’s testing it out. _

_‘That’s right, sir.’ _

_‘Steve Harrington.’_

_‘That—yes, sir.’_

_Billy still isn’t giving him anything. He’s staring dead ahead—not even looking at his Dad, even. If Steve could posit a guess as to what he’s gazing at, he’d say it’d be the barbell at rest down the hall._

_‘Well, you’ve got quite the head of hair, haven’t you, Steve Harrington?’ Mr Harrington says conversationally. Steve thinks, horrified, that he might be _drunk. _Hadn’t Billy said he’d been going to Chicago to see old friends? _

_‘Yes, sir. My Mom used to say it was like brushing a shag-pile rug.’ He tries for a smile, a shadow of the killer he used to give Mr and Mrs Wheeler and all the parents before them._

_It falls flat._

_‘What does that mean,’ says Mr Hargrove, without any inflection._

_‘Er.’ Steve drops the smile immediately. ‘That there’s, like, a lot of it? And it’s pretty, I don’t know, buoyant? It doesn’t really lie flat, like, ever. I mean, I can try, if I use a load of product, but—yeah.’_

_Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Billy close his eyes. Meeting literally anybody else’s parents, this might be _funny, _in a cringe-comedy kind of way. Like, this is where the audience would laugh and groan in sympathy with Billy for having such a disaster of a boyfriend, or whatever the fuck Steve was, because God knew they’d never had _that _conversation. _

_‘I see,’ Mr Hargrove says. ‘Billy has trouble in that way himself sometimes. All those golden curls.’ He says the last two words in a tone of voice that suggest they’re not his at all, he’s just taking and repurposing them, making them something curled and mean in his mouth. ‘You ever try and make ‘em lie flat, Bill, ever once in your life?’_

_Still, Billy says nothing. _

_Mr Hargrove steps in close. ‘I asked you a question, son,’ he says._

_‘No, sir,’ Billy gets out._

_‘You like the way they look, don’tcha,’ he says. ‘You like the way they remind you of your mother. They remind me of her, too.’ It doesn’t sound like a compliment, and Billy clearly isn’t taking it as one. He’s scarlet to look at now, even if he is still keeping his composure._

_Steve can’t watch it. ‘Sir,’ he says, and Mr Hargrove blinks and refocuses again. _

_‘Come sit with me a while, Mr Harrington,’ he says. ‘I was just going to park myself on the couch and have a drink. Maybe we could see what’s on, watch a game of something.’_

_‘Um, I’ve got to go pick someone up, actually,’ Steve says. ‘And—and Billy’s gotta get Max as well.’_

_‘That so? And where is Maxine this evening?’ Says Mr Hargrove pleasantly, turning and heading over to the fridge to root around for something. The clink of bottles says it’s probably beer he’s after._

_Steve smacks at Billy’s arm while Mr Hargrove’s back is turned, signing at him furiously, all _what the fuck should we _do_, man?

_Billy just shrugs, going to follow his Dad into the kitchen. Steve doesn’t feel like he has any choice but to do the same._

_‘She’s down at Maple Street, Dad,’ he says._

_‘At the Wheelers’?’_

_‘No,’ Billy says, after a pause. ‘The Sinclairs’.’_

_Mr Hargrove closes the fridge with a sharp snap. He comes round the table holding three bottled beers, offering one to Steve with a wry, ‘guests first.’_

_‘Thank you.’_

_Billy gets passed a bottle too, and then he and his Dad both pop the caps using nothing but the rings on their fingers, and Steve stands there until Mr Hargrove asks if he’d like to pass it back to him for one second. He does so, numbly, and Mr Hargrove returns it once the lid’s pinged against the floor._

_‘It’s _Lucas_ Sinclair, isn’t it?’ Says Mr Hargrove, as though there’s been no interruption. ‘He’s the one whose’ —there’s a pause, and Steve tenses— ‘father served in Vietnam.’_

_‘That’s him, Dad,’ Billy agrees quietly._

_‘Mm. When’d you drop her round?’_

_There is a very pregnant pause. ‘Susan dropped her round, Dad. At around eight o’clock, I think. She was going into town anyway, to see some friends.’_

_Mr Hargrove doesn’t say anything to that. He makes a gesture toward the living room, and they both head in. Steve goes to sit next to Billy on the couch, but Billy’s Dad makes a sharp motion with his hand and Billy immediately gets up and goes to sit in the armchair to the side. Mr Hargrove takes his place beside Steve, and settles back into the leather, throwing one arm back across the top of the couch and taking his first sip of beer._

_Steve mimics him in that, not sure what else he can do._

_‘So who is it you need to go pick up, Steve?’_

_‘Um, Dustin. Dustin Henderson. And… Jane Hopper.’_

_‘Those are Maxine’s friends, aren’t they? I’ve heard her say their names. What, they’re all together at the Sinclairs now, is that it? Do you two often cross paths doing a pickup? Is that how you made friends?’_

_‘No, sir, it’s not,’ Steve says, because really they made friends in the aftermath of Starcourt burning down, when Billy found himself in real need of someone to look after him, and Steve was trying to make amends for T-boning him in the mall parking lot._

_Mr Hargrove’s eyes narrow. ‘But it’s how you make time, isn’t it? How you sneak around together without arousing suspicion in this good town.’_

_‘Dad—,’ Billy begins._

‘_Shut_ up, _Bill,_ _I’m_ asking _your_ boyfriend,’ _Mr Hargrove spits at him. _

_‘He—he’s not, Dad,’ Billy says. ‘He’s not anything. This isn’t anything. Please, just—’_

_‘Steve?’ Says Mr Hargrove. ‘I asked you a question, son.’_

_‘I—’_

_‘YOU WHAT?’ Mr Hargrove roars suddenly, leaping to his feet. Steve jumps and his beer goes all over him, all over the leather of the couch, and he frantically starts to apologise and wipe it up with his sleeve, but Mr Hargrove is—Billy’s Dad is—_

_There’s suddenly a hand round Steve’s throat, tight enough from the off to make him choke, half-lifting, half-dragging him away from the sofa and slamming him into the wall by the television. _

_‘YOU WHAT, STEVE HARRINGTON?’ He’s shaking him like a dog. ‘YOU SIT WITH _ ** _MY_ ** _ BOY, IN THE CAR THAT _ ** _I _ ** _BOUGHT HIM, WAITING FOR _ ** _MY_ ** _ STEPDAUGHTER TO FINISH UP PLAYING BOARD GAMES WITH HER FRIENDS, AND YOU WHAT? YOU MAKE HIM YOUR BITCH? YOU LET HIM PUT IT UP YOUR ASS? WHAT?’_

_‘Dad, please,’ Steve hears Billy pleading distantly, over the rushing of blood in his ears. ‘He can’t breathe, let him down—’ There’s a scrabbling at the hand holding Neil’s arm; is that Steve’s hand? No, his are already wound tight at Neil’s wrist, stacked one on top of the other, trying in vain to pull it away._

_Mr Hargrove drops him suddenly, and Steve goes sprawling to the ground, coughing up a lung, feels like. The floor is creaking and complaining, like Mr Hargrove’s pacing it—a short route back out into the hall with a sharp about-turn at the end._

_‘Get away from him,’ Steve hears him say. ‘I said, get _away _from him, Bill.’ There’s a crack, and a yelp, and then silence. _

_‘Can you get up, son?’ Mr Hargrove says, squatting down by Steve’s head. ‘I’m telling you, you better get back up, if you want to make it out of here. Not gonna get anywhere wriggling like a worm.’ He lifts into a stand again, and he kicks Steve, hard, in the belly. Steve goes out of himself in pain, and when he returns he’s panting, curled up over his stomach like a dying bug._

_‘Get up,’ says Mr Hargrove. He kicks him again. ‘Get up, you fucking fag, get _up.’

_‘_Please_ stop it,’ Steve chokes out. ‘I can’t, I can’t get up.’_

_‘You need a hand?’ Says Mr Hargrove, and the next thing he knows he’s being hoisted upright by his shoulders, except he hasn’t got the strength in that moment to maintain his equilibrium. When he’s let go he falls back back against a hard surface and makes it tremble. _

_‘Don’t fuck up my drywall, boy,’ says Mr Hargrove, grabbing at him again and repositioning him on his feet. ‘I’ll make you pay through the nose for that.’ And he punches Steve square in the face so that the blood comes pouring down his upper lip, like it’s the punctuation point to a joke. _

‘Dad,’ _says Billy’s voice, at a distance, and Mr Hargrove suddenly stops._

_‘What’s that you got there, Bill?’ He says quietly, off to the side, and without the horror his undivided attention on him to keep him awake, Steve blacks out like the pitchy hours after midnight, never mind that it’s nine fucking fifteen on a Friday evening. _

*

They take five separate loops of Cherry, going slow enough to pick out every detail in the dark. Steve wants to ditch the Beamer down the road and do some reconnaissance on foot: get as close as possible to Billy’s house—under the very windows if they can—but Robin about tears him a new hole for even suggesting it.

‘What d’you think Mr Hargrove’s gonna do if he finds you nosing about in his geraniums?’ She whispers furiously, after she’s pulled him back into the car by his ear. ‘He could have killed you once already. You want to give him another shot? _I’ll _go.’

‘Check his room first,’ Steve says. ‘It’s the one to the right of the front door. There’s another window round the side that might be easier to get at. And then look—I dunno—everywhere else? The whole house. Just in case. There’s a shed out back you shouldn’t miss either. Christ,’ Steve says, suddenly horrorstruck by a fresh idea, ‘what if they have a basement?’

‘You’re spiralling, Steve,’ Robin says sternly, though her expression is not far removed from his. ‘Wait here.’ She gets out of the car.

Steve watches her slink down the street to make good on her word, but by virtue of distance and darkness she’s soon gone from his sight. They’ve parked two doors down, which due to yard space is quite a generous ways off from 4819. He can dimly see the house’s outline and little else.

She returns an age later.

‘No dice,’ she reports, as she gets into the driver’s side. ‘He’s not there.’

‘Did you check everywhere?’

‘Every room. Plus the shed. No basement that I could make out, though.’

‘Was everything okay?’

‘It was fine. I woke up the kid sister though.’

‘Max? I thought she was staying over at Lucas’?’

‘Apparently not. She came out the back door while I was poking round the shed.’

‘She give you any trouble?’

‘She asked me where her brother was. She seemed pretty worried about him.’

She hadn’t seemed too concerned earlier, when Steve had her on the walkie. But then, he reflected, she had been with her friends then, a notable number of which thought still Billy was a denizen of hell. It must have been difficult for her to show truly what she was feeling.

And she was at Cherry. As far as he knew most of the kids were sleeping in a puppy pile at Sinclair’s house for the weekend while El and Will were around. Her coming home overnight… well, it could mean anything, but Steve wondered if she was here in case Billy appeared.

Robin and Steve move off from Cherry. His next suggestion is Melvald’s, where Billy’s been working since jacking in the lifeguard gig, because Steve knows he’s used it before when things are bad with his Dad.

Robin is less supportive of the idea of snooping round a place of business, ‘because of alarms and shit,’ but she drives them there anyway.

‘Now what?’ She says, killing the engine.

‘We jump the gate round the side,’ Steve says, getting out. 

‘You couldn’t jump higher than a fifteen centimetre ruler right now.’

‘I don’t mean a literal—Jesus—you _boost_ me, right? And then I’ll climb over and let you in.’

‘Uhh, _you_ boost _me_, Harrington, and _I’ll_ climb over and let you in.’

‘I suppose that makes more sense,’ Steve mutters, after he takes a moment to turn that over in his head. 

He squats down close by the gate, making a step for Robin’s boot with his interlocked fingers. ‘Ready?’

After a moment’s hesitation, she nods and plants her foot in his hands, launching upward. She makes her body into a hook, folding the upper half of her torso over the top of the gate and then swinging a leg forcefully over the edge so she is briefly sat astride it, looking a bit winded. 

‘Hold on,’ she says, dropping from his sight, and a moment later Steve hears the latch being drawn. He slips through the gap that appears and heads straight to the fire exit, which Billy sometimes materialises out of on his break to smoke by the dumpster. Steve knows that it opens onto a stairwell, and during hard times Billy tends to roll out a sleeping bag in the overhang. Maybe six times out of ten he’ll show up at Steve’s house, but if he looks too rough, if he’s been really knocked around, if he’s been crying—then it will usually be Melvald’s.

Steve leans his body into the door, ducking his head down so that his brow is almost touching the surface, and knocks softly. ‘Billy?’ he says, probably not even loud enough to be heard on the other side, but even though he loves Robin he doesn’t exactly want her listening in at this moment. Not if Billy’s about to come through the door, eyes blacked out and cheeks still wet. So he keeps his voice low.

‘Billy, baby, you in there?’

There’s no response. He waits a beat or two; tries knocking a second time, a little more loudly. Nothing happens that time either, and then Robin comes up beside him and bangs on the metal three times with the curled side of her fist.

‘Come on out, Hargrove!’ She shouts.

Steve bats her arm away, but he doesn’t actually think Billy’s in there. Billy may like to talk big about not needing anything or anyone, but one soft word from Steve and he unspools like a reel of thread. He’d have come to the door when he heard Steve talking like that. He’d have curled himself silently into Steve’s chest.

Steve obviously doesn’t say this to Robin, but he does tell her he thinks they should keep looking. He mentions what Max told him about the new sheriff sniffing round Cherry last night, and asks if they can drive to the police station. She expresses doubt anyone will be working, small town and all. ‘We could call?’ She suggests. ‘That way we won’t waste time and gas if it turns out no one’s in till nine.’

Steve shakes his head. ‘I wanna see someone,’ he says. ‘People give you more when they have to look you in the eye.’

‘You’re too young and beautiful to be so cynical, Steve.’

‘You’re one to talk.’

‘Aw, you think I’m beautiful? Stop it, you’re making me blush…’ 

The lights are on at the police station are on, which is encouraging, but the only people inside are a couple of kids barely past high school age, probably still in training and working all the unpopular hours. 

It’s better than nothing though, and one of them is super into Robin from the moment he sees her, so he falls over himself trying to be helpful. 

‘The Hargrove kid? Yeah, we had someone call in the other night about him. Third time this month, right, Trey? The lady said she thought he’d been out causing trouble.’

‘What lady?’ Robin says, before Steve can open his mouth and remind the officer he’s there.

‘Uh… Wheeler, I think… was that the name, Trey? Wheeler?’

Over at his desk, Trey nods disinterestedly. 

‘Wheeler,’ confirms not-Trey. ‘It was a Mrs Wheeler.’

‘So what’d you guys do when you got the call?’

‘Well, not all that much. She couldn’t tell us where he was, see? Just said she had a beat-up looking kid on her hands and has reason to believe Hargrove was responsible. So Trey and Powell went round the Hargrove house to ask a few questions, same as we always do when something like this happens, but he wasn’t there - that’s pretty typical as well - so they just said to his folks to call in when he showed up.’

‘And have they?’

‘Have they what?’

‘Called in,’ Robin says. 

‘Oh. No. Don’t think so anyway. In fact, I’d be surprised if they had. That kid’s hardly ever home, from what we see. Not sure he gets on with his Pa.’

_No, he fucking doesn’t,_ Steve thinks, and wants to hit the guy. That people can notice thehorrible knots and whorls in the gnarled bark of the Hargrove family tree - people of potential _influence_, no less - and do nothing about any of them… it fills him with a helpless rage.

‘So you don’t know where he is,’ Steve says, through gritted teeth, ignoring Robin’s tug on his elbow.

The officer blinks at him. ‘Sorry, were you looking for him?’ He seems to take in Steve’s face for the first time and frowns. ‘You’re not the kid he beat up, are you?’

‘He didn’t beat anybody up,’ Steve says loudly. ‘Maybe go back to that house and ask better questions next time.’

‘What d’you mean? Like what?’

‘Like, I don’t know, why isn’t your son ever home? Or, why’re you drinking at two o’clock in the afternoon? Ooh, you could ask him why his kids have bolts on the _outside_ of their bedroom doors; now _that’s _a question that might get you somewhere—’

‘Steve, shut up,’ Robin says, and Steve purses his lips and bottles it all back up, because she’s right. It’s the wrong time, the wrong people. ‘We’re going now. Thank you for your help, officers.’

‘No problem,’ says not-Trey. They still haven’t learned his name. ‘Hey, would you maybe wanna go for a—’

They’re out the door before Robin has to cut him dead.

They don’t speak once they’re back in the Beamer. Steve’s under a serious dark cloud right now, and anything he says is going to be bad-tempered and unfair. Robin can clearly tell this from his thunderous expression and hunched-up posture, so she doesn’t even try to make conversation. She just starts up the engine for the fourth time that night and begins a slow, meandering loop of the whole of Hawkins, or as near to the whole of it as they can manage. Steve relaxes a bit after the first five minutes of driving, and starts scanning roadsides and alleyways, hoping to catch a glimpse of Billy standing miserably on a street corner or something.

‘Again?’ Robin says, when she’s finished the circuit, and Steve nods. They end up doing three loops in all. They actually have to stop and _refuel _at the gas station, because Steve guesses he was running low before, and now they’ve drained his tank to dregs. 

‘What do you wanna do, Steve?’ Robin says, when she’s back in the car, having paid for his gas for him. ‘You wanna go back to the Wheelers’? I can come and pick you up again if the morning, if you want. We could do this again.’

‘I don’t wanna go to the Wheelers.’

‘Okay… I could take you to mine? My parents won’t mind; they love you.’

_‘_No, I… Could you… could you just take me home, maybe?’

‘No one’s there, Steve,’ Robin says.

‘Oh, you think I don’t know that?’ He bites out at her. ‘You think I don’t _know _that my parents are in fucking Berlin or whatever for business like they are every other _fucking _week? Do you honestly think I’m _that stupid _that I think my own blood-fucking-_family_ actually gives _two shits_ about me, or what I do, or where I am, or whether I’ve been beaten into _mulch_ by someone they consider a familiar face about town? _Je_sus, just take me home, Robin, I _know _that no one’s there.’

‘Okay, well I’m obviously not taking you home _now_, Steve,’ says Robin, and drives them to the Wheelers. She gets Byers to let them in, by virtue of the same stone-throwing trick that got Steve’s attention, this time against the glass of the living room window.

‘What the hell?’ Byers says, bewildered, but Robin just helps Steve past him into the kitchen without a word. She makes Steve drink some water and eat some toast, and then she takes him back upstairs to Mike’s bedroom. 

‘It’s gonna be okay, Steve,’ she says to him firmly, as she lies down on the floor next to his bed. She sticks out a hand imperiously, scrunching her fingers open and closed in a rapid _give me something _motion, but Steve doesn’t have anything but his own two hands, so he passes her one of those. It seems to be the right thing to have done, because Robin laces their fingers tight together and says, softer this time, ‘everything’s gonna be okay.’

*

The next morning, Mrs Wheeler comes upstairs and wakes them both with a gentle knock on the door.

‘Steve,’ she says. ‘Your mother’s on the phone.’

‘What?’ Steve says blankly, but Mrs Wheeler’s already gone back downstairs, like she’s expecting Steve to follow rapidly in her wake_. _

‘Can you get up?’ Robin says to him, sitting up from the floor, where she’s been lying all night. She looks pretty darn grumpy, but then she always looks some kind of pissed off, usually at Steve, so perhaps the floor isn’t what’s done it.

‘I can, if you help me,’ Steve says.

Robin rolls her eyes and levers him out of bed. 

She takes him to the downstairs phone, the handset of which Mrs Wheeler has left downturned on its table. Steve picks it up, says cautiously, ‘hello?’

‘_Ciao caro, _are you okay? Your father and me have very upsetting telephone message from Signora Wheeler last night when we check machine.’

‘Mom?’ Steve says disbelievingly, although he honestly isn’t sure what else he was expecting. 

Maria Harrington clucks her tongue at him disapprovingly. _‘Sì, è Mamma, Stefano. Ti aspettavi qualcun altro?’_

_‘No, Mamma. Sono solo sorpreso, è tutto qui.’_

His Mom ‘mm’s at him. ‘This message from Karen Wheeler,’ she says. ‘You are okay, _passero mio_? She say you are in a fight?’

‘_Sto bene, Mamma. Solo un po’ dolorante.’_

_‘Un po’ dolorante,’ _repeats his Mom dangerously. ‘You are hurt, then.’

‘Maybe a little.’

‘I cry when I see you?’

‘I don’t know, Mamma. _Ma… prometto fare del mio meglio di modo che invece sorridi_.’

_‘Non cercare di incantarmi, Stefano,’ _she tells him sternly._ ‘Sono arrabbiato adesso.’_

Steve winces. ‘_Mi dispiace_.’

His mother fires rapid Italian at him then. It’s hard for him to keep up, just like it’s hard for her to follow him when he talks too fast in English. He catches the words _a_ _casa, _and _domani, _and the whole end of her address: ‘_sarai ancora a casa della signora Wheeler? Tuo padre ti verrà a prendere.’_

_‘Sì,’ _he says dazedly, as she continues, offering acknowledgments of what she’s saying every so often when needed. ‘_Sì Mamma. Sì. Va bene. Sì. Ti voglio bene anche, Mamma. Ciao.’_

He places the phone in its cradle.

‘_Non sapevo che parlassi italiano_,’ Robin says behind him.

‘I don’t speak it _well_,’ Steve says. ‘It’s my Mom—her English isn’t so good, so I kinda just have to… give it my best. How do you know Italian anyway? I don’t think you ever said.’

‘I _learnt_ it, dingus,’ she says. ‘This is kinda cute, y’know. We have a secret language now. What next? Friendship bracelets? I can do you one with little diamonds, if you like.’

‘_Mangia un cazzo, amica.’ _

‘What?’ She says.

‘Aha, fluent in three languages, _culo mio._’

‘Okay, so maybe I struggle a bit at understanding when people tell me to eat a fuck,’ Robin says, ‘what even is that anyway? Does it make sense in Italian or something?’

‘Dick, Robin, I told you to eat a dick.’

‘Oh. Well, you can’t have learned that from your _Mamma_. What did she say anyway? I only caught a few bits of that.’

‘She and my Dad are flying home,’ Steve says. ‘They’re getting in tomorrow.’

‘Wow. That’s—really nice, Steve. Did they hear about what happened? I mean, do they know about’ —Robin motions expansively at him, in all his technicolour glory— ‘_this?_’

‘Yeah, so I guess they got a message from Mrs Wheeler, saying I was a bit messed up.’

Robin snorts. ‘You are a _lot_ messed up, _amico_. Though you are looking a little better today. You feeling okay?’

Steve knows she’s not just talking about his bruises. ‘Yeah,’ he says, because he does. He slept some last night, and Robin’s been looking after him really fucking well, so he does. ‘Thanks.’

‘No big,’ she says, with a shrug. ‘Can I use the phone? I need to call my parents and tell them where I am. I didn’t say I was going out last night.’

Steve moves aside to let her. He goes into the kitchen, where Mrs Wheeler is making scrambled eggs which, she informs him, will be ready any minute, so he should go sit at the dining room table while she serves it all up and gets the others.

He sits at a table and eats an overcrowded breakfast with the entire Wheeler family, plus Robin, plus Jonathan, plus Will, plus El—and he tries his best to be grateful for any of it.

_*_

His Dad picks him up around five o’clock the following afternoon.

‘Stephen,’ he sighs, when he sees Steve’s face, looking him over wearily. Then he jerks his head back at his silver Lancia Delta: _well, come on, then. _

‘Dad, my car—’

‘I’ll get Ted to bring it back for you,’ Mrs Wheeler says. ‘Don’t worry about it, Steve.’

‘Okay. Thanks Mrs Wheeler,’ he says awkwardly.

‘You’re very welcome, Steve,’ says Mrs Wheeler. ’You feel better now.’

‘We’ll see you at school in a few days?’ Nancy adds, and that’s where they leave it. He gets in his Dad’s car and they go home.

‘We’re back,’ his Dad calls, dropping his key in the dish by the door. 

‘_Stefano!’ _His mother exclaims, flying down the hall. ‘Oh, _dio mio_, you look very bad, _passero. _I cry.’

‘Hi Mom,’ Steve says, trying not to wince as she clasps his face.

‘Does it hurt a lot?’ She says to him. ‘_Poverino. Guardati, sei_ _brutta come la fame. _Your _face_, my love, your beautiful eyes! They are so ugly now!’

‘_Va bene, Mamma_,’ Steve says, but he’s not really concentrating on her anymore. His eyes have gone to the person who has just sidled out of his kitchen and is watching him quietly over his mother’s head.

‘_Mamma_,’ Steve says, coming back into the moment, ‘_Mamma, per favore, non fare una scenata. Abbiamo compagnia, no?’_

His mother frowns at him, then looks back at Billy as though she’d forgotten he was there. ‘Ah, _sì_,’ she says, and adds, ‘Guglielmo is here about college application, Stefano. He arrives just recently. He is very… hmm, _como si dice in inglese… lo saprai, Stefano. Tuo amico è molto incantevole?’_

‘Charming,’ Steve says, with understanding. ‘You think he’s charming.’

‘_Yes_,’ she says, beaming. Behind her, Billy is stone-faced. He doesn’t crack a smile until she glances back at him, and then he says smoothly: ‘you’re too kind, Mrs Harrington.’

‘You are a lovely young man,’ she tells him. ‘But my son needs to rest, you know, so please do not keep him too long. He is very bad at words anyway, so he will not be any help to you.’ And she drifts away, calling over her shoulder something about putting _la caffetteria _on for them both.

Steve and Billy stare at one another. 

‘How long have you been here?’ Steve says.

‘Three days.’ 

‘Right. And when did she notice?’ 

‘About a half hour ago. I’ve mostly been in your pool house.’ 

Steve closes his eyes and nods. When he opens them again Billy’s watching him steadily. 

‘How are you feeling?’ He says. 

‘How am I—I’m feeling out of my fucking _mind_, Billy,’ Steve hisses. 

Billy’s stance changes: he stands up straighter, starts fidgeting. His expression goes tight and wary, and he starts skating his eyes between the doors. ‘Okay, just— let’s go somewhere, if you’ve got things you need to... let’s go for a drive or something, yeah?’ 

‘I need to lie down,’ Steve says. ‘Or I’m gonna fall down. I think I even saw stars when you came out of the kitchen.’ 

Normally saying something like that might make Billy smile. _Come over in a swoon, dija, Harrington? _Steve can hear it in his head. But Billy just nods, looking miserable. 

‘Your room then?’

‘Yeah. Help me?’ 

Billy starts forward. He crosses the space in three swift strides, gets an arm under Steve’s shoulder and starts to take his weight.

Steve leans in straightaway, magnetised. His other arm comes up and he gets Billy in a hug so hard it knocks him a little off-balance. They sway on the spot a moment before Billy rights them, coming to rest his hands lightly on Steve’s hips.

‘Steve,’ he mutters next to his ear. 

‘I thought you might be...’ 

Billy shifts, turns his head a bit in the circle of Steve’s arms so that he can see the flash of one glittering blue eye very close to his. 

‘I’m okay,’ he says, after a beat. 

‘Yeah, I wish you’d fucking _told _me that, asshole.’ 

‘I thought you’d be resting.’ 

Steve laughs, a low and broken sound and Billy stiffens momentarily when he hears it. Hesitates a moment, then kisses him. Steve’s laugh turns to a whimper, but when he goes to cling tighter Billy pulls away. 

‘C’mon,’ he says quietly. 

The stairs are hard. There’s a moment when he has to stop, hold onto the banister with one hand and Billy with the other, and Billy brushes another soft kiss to his temple, right where the bone is thinnest, where someone could really hurt him if they were looking to.

‘Nearly there,’ Billy says to him.

Steve breathes, and takes another step, feeling absurdly close to tears. 

Billy deposits him on the bed, and the act of freeing his arm from around the other boy’s shoulders and falling from him into the mattress actually looses a tear from Steve’s eye. He turns the side of his face quickly into the pillow to hide it, staring out the pool-facing window. 

He clears his throat. ‘Don’t leave,’ he says. ‘We need to talk.’ 

‘You should probably rest,’ Billy says. ‘Now that you know that I’m alive and all.’ 

‘You’re not leaving.’ 

‘I’m not?’ Billy says, sounding several degrees colder. 

‘Don’t...’ Steve starts. ‘You know I didn’t mean... Don’t be like that.’ 

‘Then don’t fucking talk to me _like that_,’ Billy snaps.

Steve’s eyes blur in an instant. 

‘Sorry.’ 

There’s a very pregnant pause. Steve’s not looking at Billy, still. He hopes Billy’s not looking at his face. There are some real big boys swimming round in his eyes now. 

There’s a movement to his left and the bed dips down on that side. A second later and Billy’s tucked himself in next to him carefully, not quite touching, but leaning up on one elbow to peer at Steve expectantly, waiting for him to turn and face him. When Steve doesn’t he lies down flat with a sigh and talks to the back of his head.

‘C’mon, don’t cry. You know I’m a mean piece of shit when I think anyone’s coming for me.’ 

‘You’re not a piece of shit,’ Steve mumbles. He wipes clumsily at his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s up with me.’ 

‘You need to rest,’ Billy repeats.

‘Yeah, probably, but I also need to talk to you. Promise me you won’t leave.’ 

‘Where would I go?’ 

‘Um, the Wheelers’?’ Steve says impatiently. ‘Mrs Wheeler would take you in for sure. Or the Sinclairs’—they’d have you because of Max if nothing else. You could try Henderson’s, even, but he might set you on fire, so maybe store that one as a last resort.’ 

‘He’s seen you, huh?’

‘Yeah,’ Steve says. Dustin had come over after Robin had left on Sunday, carrying most of the conversation between them by waxing poetic about Suzie, which was just fine by Steve given the circumstances.

‘And Sinclair? You don’t think he’d rip me a new asshole?’ Billy says, in that tone of voice he uses when he’s teasing, accounting for all his boyfriend’s kids. When Steve doesn’t answer he nudges gently at his ankle. ‘Hey, I’m just…’

‘Yeah, Billy, I know.’

Billy goes quiet, and then Steve feels him press a kiss to the back of his neck. ‘Go to sleep, Harrington. We’ll talk when you wake up.’ 

*

It’s dark in his room when Steve wakes up again. His alarm clock is reading 22:54, which means he’s slept a full five hours—more than he ever usually does through the night. He bolts upright in bed in a panic over Billy, subsiding comically into groans and falling back on his arms when his body can’t take the lurch, rolling over onto his front and dunking his face back into his pillows. 

He’s been reassured on the Billy front anyway. He’s sitting at Steve’s desk, working on something under the light of the lamp.

‘Are you doing a _fake college application_?’ He moans into his Egyptian cotton. 

‘Your mom was trying to get me to leave,’ Billy says, by way of an explanation. ‘And it’s not fake—it’s yours. You’re welcome, by the way.’ 

‘’M not going to college.’

‘Well, not with that attitude.’

_‘Billy,’_ Steve gripes, lifting his head and glaring at him.

‘Relax, Harrington. I was just working your parents, that’s all. Your Dad seems to be convinced you’re going to Purdue next year, you got any idea why that is?

‘Yeah, I need to talk to him about that, I guess.’

‘Well,’ Billy says, finishing the sentence he’s on, and putting down the pen, ‘I’ve bought you some time for that conversation.’

‘You’re the best, baby_,’ _Steve says feelingly, which seems to be what makes Billy turn andactually look at him, stare bravely into the fucking mess of Steve’s face without recoiling in disgust.

‘How do you feel?’ He says. ‘Need anything?’ 

‘Water?’ Steve suggests. 

Billy gestures to his bedside, where there is a full glass he must have left there earlier. Steve starts drinking, assessing him over the rim. ‘What happened with your Dad?’ He asks, when he’s finished. ‘I don’t remember much. Did—did you leave? I thought—’

Billy’s face _crumples_. Steve’s never seen it do anything like that before. ‘I didn’t _leave_,’ he says. ‘I went to get the _phone_, Harrington_, Jesus _Christ.’

‘Right. And you called...?’ 

‘I didn’t call anyone. I picked up the handset and threatened him with the police. He was gonna kill you,’ he adds softly, which makes Steve unhappy, because that was definitely an apology of sorts, an explanation, and not to Steve either. It’s not fair; Neil’s not even _here. _How does his reach extend into Steve’s bedroom like this, into this space that should belong him and him alone? 

He sidesteps the landmine with care. ‘And that worked? He stopped?’ 

‘He—told me to leave. So I left. Took you to the Wheelers’ place. Almost got into it with one of the Byers boys.’ 

‘With Jonathan?’

‘_Obviously_ with Jonathan, shit-for-brains, you really think I’d beat up his bug-eyed kid brother? _Don’t answer that.’ _He glares. ‘Not a _word _from you on that_, _Harrington.’ 

A moment’s silence, and then Billy seems to make a concerted effort to force some of the tension from his body. His shoulders go down a bit, and he tips his head forward and digs his thumb and forefingers into either side of the bridge of his nose. ‘I didn’t mean—I’m not calling you stupid,’ he grinds out, like he hadn’t _just _said Steve’s got crap between his ears, but whatever. Steve _is _stupid, sometimes, and he says as much quite charitably. 

‘No, you’re not, you got a head injury and I’m just pissed all to hell right now and I’m saying things I don’t mean. You’re not stupid for thinking I might start on a kid. I only wish you were. I can be... difficult to predict, sometimes.’ 

‘You’re getting better.’ Steve knocks surreptitiously at the wood of his bedside table as he says it.

Billy resets. ‘I took you to the Wheelers’, almost got into it with _Jonathan_, ‘cause he thought I’d murdered you. Then Mrs Wheeler came running out and threatened us with a hose, so that broke up fast. We got you inside, and then she and Mrs Byers and your ex-girlfriend all started fussing over you while Jonathan went to call the cops, and I thought that was a good time to go. They had you covered, and I didn’t want to get eaten alive by your ex and her freak-a-deak boyfriend, so.’

‘Plus it meant you didn’t have to answer any awkward questions when the cops got involved,’ Steve says lightly. 

Billy stares at him. ‘What?’ 

‘You know, about what happened to me,’ Steve says. ‘You’re telling me you didn’t want people to think this was you?’ He indicates his face.

‘You _know_ it’s not so simple as you’re making it sound,’ Billy says slowly. ‘I _wanted_ to tell them about Dad. You think I_ liked_ keeping it to myself? What if he’d gone looking for you after? What if he’d showed up at Karen’s door and got his hands on you again?’

‘You’re saying that as if I _don’t_ give a shit about my own skin. Which I do, ‘cuz clearly one of us has to.’

‘What the fuck, Steve, don’t _say_ that, you were as safe as I could make you.’

‘I wasn’t. You could have told them it wasn’t you. _Then _that would be true.’

Billy gets up off the swivel, striding a few paces off to the side, like he can’t stand to be having this conversation anymore. He drags a hand over his jaw and sniffs hard, the silver on his middle finger winking in the gloom.

Steve watches him struggle, feeling almost predatory. ‘I told Mrs Wheeler,’ he says abruptly, which makes Billy stiffen and look at him again. ‘I told her he hurts you. It’s on her radar, Billy. It’s gonna be on a lot of people’s radars, from now on.’

‘What the fuck, Steve.’

‘_You didn’t let me know you were okay_,’ Steve nearly shouts, sleeping parents be damned, and Billy looks wild with fright. ‘I was out of my _mind _about you. What was I supposed to have done? I couldn’t even take a piss without someone taking me to the bathroom _door._ I _needed_ people who could _help _me, who _knew _what was going on.’

‘That wasn’t your place, Harrington, you had no right—’

‘Oh, I don’t have a right? You’re looking me in my face right now and saying I don’t have a right? Is that _actually_ what you’re trying to tell me here?’

‘He’s my _Dad_.’

‘_I’m your boyfriend_,’ Steve says, which shuts Billy up straightaway. It’s never been said. He repeats it again, more softly. ‘I’m your boyfriend, Billy. And you’re mine. Neither of us should have to see one another treated like we’ve been treated by _your Dad_.’ 

‘Do you understand, Billy? Do you understand why I had to say something now? Why I’ve always wanted to? Why I wish you that you _could?’_

Billy seems wholly unable to speak. His throat bobs as he swallows, and he rasps out, ‘yeah. I understand.’

‘Okay.’ Steve sighs. He considers Billy for a moment, and then he asks, ‘so what happened after you left the Wheelers’? You’ve really been hiding out in my pool house the whole time?’

‘Yeah,’ Billy says, still having difficulty with his words. ‘It’s, uh, pretty much the perfect place to lie low. You left a window open downstairs, Harrington, so I could get in and out of the house pretty easily to grab food and to shower and stuff. Plus I could keep up with what was going on, ‘cuz people kept leaving messages on the answer machine.’

‘People? You mean, like, Mrs Wheeler?’

‘Sure,’ Billy says, but he looks a bit shifty. Steve thinks it’s gonna be one of those things he clams up about, but then Billy admits, ‘and Susan, sometimes.’

_‘Susan?’_

‘Isn’t that what I said? Yeah, she’s been calling.’

‘Max said none of them back at Cherry knew anything.’

‘She _doesn’t _know anything. What, you think I was _picking up? _No, she was just leaving messages, same as Mrs Wheeler. She must have thought this was where I’d go. The messages were like, coded and shit, don’t worry—but they’re all gone now anyway. I deleted them as soon as I listened to them.’

‘What kind of things was she saying?’

‘Just, what’s going on at home. So I know when to go back.’

‘Go back,’ Steve repeats, flatly.

‘Yeah.’ Billy meets his stare, utterly impassive. Whatever he sees in Steve’s has him shifting a bit, uncomfortable. ‘It’s only a couple more months, Harrington.’

‘And then what? You fuck off back to Cali?’

Steve struggles off the bed so he’s standing too.

‘Look, can’t we just—chill, for five seconds, Harrington?’ Billy says, a bit desperately. ‘You’re in a bad way, you’ve already reamed me out once tonight and—and I—I can’t _cope_ with you talking like this, okay, why you gotta be talking like this?’

‘Because I _love _you,’ Steve says roughly. 

‘Oh c’mon, Steve, don’t,’ Billy says tiredly.

‘Don’t what? Don’t love you? It’s a bit fucking late.’

Billy regards him balefully, and Steve gives a deep, put-upon sigh. ‘What, you don’t love me back, Hargrove?’

‘Is that what you want me to say? That I love you—will it make this better for you?’

‘Well, I guess I might feel like your Dad nearly killed me over something halfway important, otherwise I’ve really got nothing over here.’

Billy flinches, just like Steve meant him to.

‘Of course I fucking—,’ he mutters, but Steve doesn’t actually want it like this, not really.

‘It’s okay, Billy,’ he says wearily. ‘You don’t have to.’ 

There’s a short beat of silence, and then Steve starts slowly forward, like maybe they can hug now, and as soon as he sees it coming Billy clears the rest of the space between them and holds onto him like Steve’s the only buoy in the ocean.

‘I’m—so fucking sorry, Steve,’ he says furiously into Steve’s neck, and Steve thinks he might be crying.

‘It’s okay,’ Steve says numbly. ‘Billy, it’s okay.’

Billy rears back. His eyes are already closed, lashes spiked and wet, as he goes blindly to kiss Steve on the mouth, and Steve’s stomach somersaults like it’s the first time all over again, like it’s the winter of ‘85 and they’re in Billy’s car hotboxing whilst waiting for the kids, and Billy’s gone _hey, _and turned Steve’s face towards him, and within seconds they’re pawing at each other like Max isn’t gonna open the front passenger door at any moment, and Dustin isn’t gonna start yelling Steve’s name over by the Beamer and theorising loudly to the whole parking lot that he’s been kidnapped by Russians again, and Max isn’t gonna have to cover wildly for them both by saying she thinks she saw him go over to Family Video to talk to Robin, who’s on shift by herself now because Steve asked if he could go a bit early to go—make out with Billy in the parking lot apparently—

‘Is this okay? Am I hurting you?’ Billy says breathlessly, against Steve’s lips.

‘Let’s move to the bed,’ Steve says, by way of an answer. 

Billy nods, and lets Steve move away from him so he can lay back down.

‘Should I lock the door?’ He asks, not making a move to follow.

‘I mean, if we’ve learned _any _lesson from all this—‘

‘It’s way too soon to make jokes, Harrington,’ Billy interrupts tetchily. He strides over to the door and slides the bolt across, then comes back to Steve’s waiting arms, settling in to the familiar trade of touch between them. Only there’s an edge to it tonight, go fucking figure. Billy’s a stripped wire, thrumming in the circle of Steve’s arms like something only just contained. His caresses are on the edge of painful, frantic and unthinking. One hand grasps desperately at Steve’s hip and chin and hair in the span of a single kiss. 

‘Can I, can we...’ He says, hands skittering nervously around Steve’s neck. Steve reaches up and grabs one, holding it to his face and then turning to kiss the palm. ‘Yeah,’ He says, and he leads it matter-of-factly to his groin. ‘C’mon, babe.’

Billy hides his face in Steve’s neck again, moving his hand slowly but firmly against Steve’s growing erection.

‘Take your clothes off,’ Steve whispers in his ear, and Billy leans back obediently to shuck his shirt.

Steve struggles upward a bit too, just enough to get his polo over his head and cast it to the side. 

‘It’s nothing,’ He says to Billy, seeing his stricken expression as he takes in Steve’s torso.

‘Oh my God, shut the _fuck _up—’

‘_Nothing_,’ Steve says again, more firmly. ‘Don’t look at it, baby. Close your eyes.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Baby,’ Steve insists, already pulling him back down. ‘Beautiful boy.’

‘_Steve_.’

Billy goes for him in near-anger, and they kiss some more. Steve revels in the warmth and shape of Billy’s skin against his, permeated with subtle hills and valleys where his muscles have determined his topography. He’s a little damp with sweat, which preludes some gross licking on Steve’s part when Billy’s preoccupied getting his pants off, sucking a little, giving a gentle nip to the tender skin at his jugular and wondering if it tickles. 

‘Can you let me concentrate a sec over here?’ Billy says crossly, rolling off Steve to kick off his jeans.

Steve also takes the opportunity to divest himself of his sweats and underwear, his cock jutting up and out as soon as he frees it, flush with blood. Billy’s got his out too; he’s giving it a couple of strokes where he kneels, his eyes moving from Steve’s groin to his face.

‘What do you want?’ He asks seriously.

‘_Sit _on me already.’

‘_Fuck, _okay,’ Billy says, on the huff of a laugh, fumbling for the bedside cabinet. 

Steve lunges upward as he’s struggling with the lube, curling his fingers round the tube until they’re practically holding hands around it, and Billy lets go so he can take it from him. Then he slicks up his fingers, Billy gets his right leg over in a straddling position, and Steve reaches around to stick a finger up his ass.

Billy yelps and grabs at his shoulders, levelling him with a hot glare, which softens as Steve gentles his ministrations. Billy gulps. He opens his mouth to speak and closes it again. Steve drags his finger out of him slowly, pumps it back in, and gets a long, wanton sigh.

‘Good?’

Billy nods. 

Steve pulls out again, rubs the ring of Billy’s asshole carefully. The next time he withdraws, he adds a second finger, and starts working him open properly. 

Billy doesn’t say much; Steve mostly has to gauge by his noises if he’s getting it right. He’s staring intently at Billy’s face too, catching the little shifts of expression and flutters of movement around his mouth and eyes, which are shut like a dreamer’s, lidded but restless under their covers. 

Eventually Billy moves an arm behind him to still Steve at the wrist, and Steve moves his hand away so Billy can line up properly, holding himself as open as he can before sinking down and enveloping Steve’s cock with his body.

‘Oh,’ Steve hears himself say, distantly, as Billy begins to rock himself slowly forwards and backwards, as the bed begins to creak underneath them. ‘Oh, I—that’s good, baby, that’s—_fuck_, I... kiss me, baby, can you kiss me?’ He leans up, straining for Billy’s lips, which Billy gives, breathing through his nose. 

‘Oh _God, _that’s it, that’s _it_, Billy—’ Steve says to his mouth, and he thinks Billy might be mumbling some shit back at him, but he’s always been more of a talker than a listener so he doesn’t make it all out. His name is in there, that much he can tell, and maybe that’s all it is, Billy asking for him over and over, even as he takes it all anyway.

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ Steve says breathlessly. ‘Did I say that earlier? That I thought you were dead?’

‘’M here. ‘M okay. I’m here with you.’ 

‘I don’t think you can ever leave me, Billy, I won’t _survive_ it, I won’t _survive_ you—’

Billy shushes him, which is rare, because Billy _never _shushes him. He really gets off on Steve’s monologuing most of the time.

‘Say I don’t have to,’ Steve says into his collarbone. ‘Please say that. It won’t mean anything right now, you can do it, c’mon.’

‘Shh, Steve, shh—‘

Steve rolls them abruptly. His body screams at him, and Billy struggles some, but in the end Steve manages to tip him onto his back in the middle of his bed, hitching his knees over his shoulders so that Billy pants with the stretch. 

‘Tell me,’ Steve says into his neck, rolling his hips forward and sheathing himself again. ‘Billy, just fucking—’

‘I love you,’ Billy says instead. ‘Christ, I love you, you asshole, I love you _so fucking much.’_

‘I—I love you too,’ Steve stammers, caught slightly off-guard, but Billy bulldozes right over him.

‘I’m not gonna _leave _you. You think I could do that? You _think for one second—‘_

‘I don’t. I don’t think—‘

‘You ‘n I are gonna get _married_, baby,’ Billy pants, his chest heaving. ‘I’m gonna raise your fucking _children; _I’m gonna be wearing your ring in our _graves—’_

Steve kisses him, gets a hand between them to strip his cock. Billy keens, and Steve knows he’s coming from the way from the way he’s breathing hard and fast through his nose, from the wet spatter of jizz between them. Steve feels the call of his own body, and he nearly forgets himself in the whiteout of his own pleasure. 

When he comes to, his head is in the valley of Billy’s neck. Billy’s hand is in his hair, pulling insistently at the tufts round back. 

‘My fucking _hips_, Harrington,’ he’s saying with a croak, and Steve pulls back to let him unhook his knees with a heartfelt groan.

‘Sorry, are you ninety?’ Steve asks him, laying off to the side. 

Billy rolls over to face him. ‘_You_ try being bent in half and see how your joints hold up,’ he retorts.

‘Mm, maybe later,’ Steve says, reaching out a hand to play with Billy’s hair. ‘I could sleep.’

‘Right, because the _five hours _you had earlier weren’t enough.’

‘Sorry about that, baby. Were you bored?’

‘Not exactly the word I’d use,’ Billy says, and Steve focuses on stroking through one of his curls, to avoid acknowledging the spectre of Neil Hargrove in his bedroom all over again.

Billy’s staring right into his eyes, even though Steve’s not looking into his. He’s working up to say something, it’s obvious. 

‘He’s never gonna touch you again,’ he says eventually. ‘No one’s ever gonna hurt you again, Steve, y’hear me? Not while I’m around, not while I’m in your life. I won’t let them. I’m gonna take care of you until you’re dead in the ground, and then I’ll follow after you so I can take care of you in the afterlife as well, if it is so fucking kind that there should be one for us.’ 

‘You’re not being very Catholic, Billy,’ Steve says, getting his fore and middle fingers on Billy’s cross.

Billy snorts. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say the ass-fucking just now was very Catholic either, Harrington,’ he points out cattily. 

Steve smiles faintly, avoiding Billy’s ferocious stare when he admits, ‘I don’t know if all that’s enough.’

‘What do you mean it’s not enough?’ 

‘Aside from the obvious that you can’t guarantee something like that… it’s not enough for you to promise me I won’t ever get hurt again, because you’re not promising me the same for yourself. I care about you just as much as I do about me, babe. Sometimes I think I care more.’

‘You want me to get out,’ Billy says.

‘I do.’ Steve nods. ‘I don’t care how you do it, Bill, if you want to go to the cops, or run away back to Oceanside—I don’t mind. Honestly. I’ll live. I’ll help you do it, even. I just don’t want you in that house anymore.’

Billy mulls it over. Sex has made him more receptive. It always does. Especially when it goes all intense like that at the end there, when Steve manages to crack into the keep of Billy’s affection and turn the walls to rubble.

Billy covers Steve’s hand in his, where it’s still touching the cross on his chest. Says, ‘I really do love you, y’know that?’

Steve smiles at him sadly. ‘Yeah, Billy,’ he says. ‘I know that.’

*

Billy wants to run. He was always going to want to run. The thought that he might have tried any other way was nothing but a dream on Steve’s part, one that had them living in each other’s pockets in the same shitty apartment, maybe with Robin there too, because Steve thinks she’s the best person in the world and he wants her and Billy to make friends, even though he’s sure it will result in their ganging up on him together from time to time. 

Just the pair of them would be fine as well, though. They’d work menial jobs to keep their rent paid, and Steve could spend the weekends lazing around until mid-morning when Billy effectively snarked him into doing some chores. 

Robin could come round for lunch on Sundays when Max did. Steve would get Billy to acquiesce that Lucas could come too, or whoever Max liked, and maybe Robin would start bringing Tammy Thompson along at some point, because who really knew for sure what was possible under this sun? Billy and Steve could kiss each other good morning, and fuck each other goodnight, and live a whole and wonderful life in all the hours between. 

But Billy wants to run, so. 

Steve goes with him to the house on Cherry the next afternoon while Neil is still at work. Max lets them both in at the door. When she sees Billy her face spasms and trembles a little at the chin, but a second later she has it under control once more.

‘Hey,’ she says, and lets them pass over the threshold. 

Billy goes straight to his room while Steve waits with Max in the kitchen. She gets him some juice, unasked, from the fridge. 

‘So what’s going on?’ She says to him, as she gives him the glass, but she must already know. She wouldn’t be so serious and quiet, if she didn’t know.

‘Nothing,’ Steve says. ‘Just picking up some more clothes. Billy refuses to wear any pastel, and that’s pretty much all I can offer him.’

Max nods. ‘I’ve, uh, I’ve got some of his stuff,’ she says. ‘In my room. I’ll go get it.’ 

‘Okay,’ Steve says, and she disappears into a door.

Billy comes out five minutes later with a packed duffle. He’s changed out of the jeans Steve lent him, but he’s kept the jacket on, which makes Steve suppress a smile. They’re the classics for a reason. 

‘Ready to go?’ He says to Steve impassively.

Max rematerialises in the doorway. ‘Here,’ she says, holding out a pile of clothes, ‘did you want to take any of these?’

Billy looks at them.

‘Nah, shitbird, you keep ‘em,’ he says, after a pause. ‘You’ll need the layers come winter.’

‘And you won’t?’ She says.

For a moment it doesn’t seem like Billy’s gonna respond. Then he says carefully, ‘no, Maxine. I won’t.’

She nods again, looks down at the pile of clothes in her arms. Smoothes out a crease she sees in the topmost hoodie. 

‘Shit,’ Billy says suddenly, 'you guys wanna smoke?’ He’s heading to the veranda out back before before either of them can respond. 

Max puts down her load on the kitchen table and follows him without hesitation. Steve is a little slower, coming out when Billy is already putting the cigarette in Max’s hand, leaning hesitantly against the skirting rail as Billy fumbles about his pockets for his lighter.

Max hasn’t smoked before. She just turned fifteen this past June. Steve feels some kinda reservation about introducing her to the whole experience, but before he can decide if he wants to say something Billy is giving her his zippo, showing her how to spin the wheel.

‘Hair back, shit-for-brains,’ He says sharply, pushing the long red fall of it behind one ear for her. ‘Unless you wanna be bald.’

Max actually stops and gives him back the cigarette and the lighter, pausing to tie her hair up using the scrunchie on her wrist. Then she makes a motion with her hand to take the cig back, her face set in concentration.

Billy shows her how to work the lighter again. 

‘You got it,’ he says, when the cherry’s good and red. ‘Now put it—yeah, and breathe in. Not too hard,’ he adds, too late, as Max starts to hack and cough. He clicks his tongue. ‘_Gently_, Mayfield, _gently_, you don’t _know_ her like all that yet.’ 

He takes the cigarette from her and takes a drag from it himself.

Steve pulls his own pack of Marlboros out of his pocket. He feels pretty incidental to the whole situation here, but it’s not like there’s all that much talking going on anyway. Mostly the three of them are just sitting and carefully enjoying each other’s company.

‘I feel a bit sick,’ Max says, after a bit.

‘Yeah, you’ve had enough,’ Billy says, commandeering what’s left. ‘Not bad for your first try though, kiddo.’

Max smiles at him shyly. 

‘Don’t make a habit of it, by the way,’ Billy says, and Steve snorts, ‘it rots the lungs, or some shit. Fucks you up from the inside out. If you cut me open you wouldn’t even know you had a human being on the table, it’s that fucking toxic. My chest’s a cavity of black tar.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Max says to him. 

‘I’m not being stupid. Steve, tell—’ but he cuts off, because Max has gotten up and come put her arms around him from the side, ducking her head in close.

Billy is shocked beyond speech, Steve can tell. He hardly knows what to do with himself. He stares across the yard, not saying or doing much of anything. Then he closes his eyes, and his hand creeps up to hold Max’s wrist where it rests against his shoulder.

Steve gets up quietly and goes back into the kitchen.

Billy reappears some ten minutes later, his eyes over-bright.

‘Let’s go,’ he says to Steve, who is sitting at the table finishing the juice from earlier.

‘Is Max—’

‘Steve,’ Billy says, striding past him down the hall. ‘We’re leaving.’

Steve looks back through the back door, where he can just make out Max sitting on the veranda, bent over her knees so that her hair is a curtain across her face.

‘_Steve_,’ Billy says again. 

Steve follows Billy out to the car.

*

Billy pulls over when they’re just outside of Hawkins. The road is long and empty both ways. 

‘I’m leaving you here,’ he says quietly. ‘Will you be okay to walk back?’

‘I’ll get a ride, it’s fine.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’ll come find you,’ Steve says. ‘When I can, I’ll come and I’ll find you.’

‘You don’t need to do that.’

‘Really? You’re gonna sit there and tell me what _I_ need? I’m gonna save up some money and then I’m gonna get right in my car and drive east. I’m gonna _find _you, Billy, save you from whatever sorry state you’ve got yourself in.’

‘And what if I’m not going east?’

‘Well, then I’m gonna be _pissed_. Now’s your time to give a guy a clue,’ Steve says, and Billy smiles at him lopsidedly.

‘Billy,’ says Steve seriously. ‘Give me a clue.’

Billy shakes his head. ‘You’re gonna see the rest of this year through; you’re gonna put in some good, long hours at Family Video so you have cash, and then you’re gonna get _out _again, Harrington, meet some new people who aren’t that square Robin you’re always hanging round with; hell, maybe you’ll even date a few of them—in fact, _please _date a few of them, Steve, I’m begging you. You can tell yourself you’re doing it for me. And you’re gonna move out of your parents’ house too, ‘cuz I don’t fucking like your Dad. Your Mom’s all right, but your Dad’s a piece of shit. And then if—_if_, Harrington—you still want this after you’ve _lived a little more_, if you still see a _future_ with it, _then _you come find me. I don’t wanna see you otherwise; I don’t even wanna know you.’ 

‘How will I know where to go?’

‘You’ll know. I’ll let you know.’

‘Okay. I believe you,’ Steve says, trying to sound loving and loyal and not at all threatening. Billy laughs; huffs, ‘c’mere’ at him, reaching over to pull Steve in by the back of his neck and kissing him. There’s no real life in it; it’s a dead thing now. They said all their goodbyes last night without knowing it. But Steve kisses him back all the same, and tries breathe the colour and vitality back into the love between them, if only for this moment. 

Billy pulls away, and they look at each other for a long time.

‘Later, Hargrove,’ Steve whispers.

‘Goodbye Steve,’ Billy says, and pushes his door open for him. 

Steve gets out of the car.

‘See you in another life,’ Billy says, through the window.

‘You’ll _see me_ in California,’ Steve says, and Billy grins, starting his car.

‘If you say so, Harrington. Don’t leave me dreaming out there.’ And then he revs, so that anything Steve might say is lost in the noise, and the Camaro surges onto the road out of Hawkins like it was always as desperate to leave as Billy was.

‘He’ll let me know,’ Steve says to himself, as he watches it go. He starts to walk heavily in the opposite direction, heading for the nearest payphone where he’ll call someone who can spare the time and the good goddamn to take him home. 

*

Yeah, Steve sees ‘86 through. Yeah, he works at Family Video. Yeah, he fucking _meets people—_in bars, at work—even if he can’t bring himself to date any of them.

He moves out of his parents’ house in fall, and moves in with Robin in the centre of town, which is great. The only downside is that everyone thinks they’re an item—high school sweethearts despite the fact they only really got to know each other properly after graduating, with Steve saving up every spare cent he can to buy her a ring. 

Robin bears it with much better grace than Steve would have, back in the day. She tells him it’s nice for her parents, how guys don’t really give her grief anymore because she’s ‘spoken for’ or whatever, and that more girls talk to her these days than they ever did when it was her against the world.

‘Sure, they start out thinking they might use _me_ to get to _you_,’ she says, shrugging. ‘But by the end of it all I’ve fucked their brains out their ears and they’re wondering if they _might_ be more than a one on the Kinsey Scale, so all in all, I’d say things’re working out.’

‘Wow, okay. Invite one of them over for dinner sometime, I guess.’ That counts as meeting a new person, right? Steve generously decides that it does. He thinks he’s doing pretty well at meeting all of Billy’s conditions, actually, even if though it’s not like Billy can see any of it. 

’87 rolls round to greet them, and Steve and Robin are having a New Year’s Eve party at their apartment which is getting a little out of hand, but it’s New Year’s, so hopefully the cops will turn a blind eye, and Max sidles up next to him in the kitchen with enough makeup on to age her up to her early twenties. ‘Hey.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Steve says, ‘I told you, no party members allowed!’

‘Robin let us in,’ says Max. ‘Actually, she opened the door and screamed ATTACK OF THE NERDS, but then she ran off down the hall and left the door open behind her, so.’

‘So you’re all here,’ Steve says wearily, ‘Perfect. Brilliant. Did you want something to drink?’

‘Sure.’ Max hoists herself up onto the counter, kicking her feet at the cupboards while Steve pours her some punch into a red solo cup, trying not to get jostled by all the people bumping at his elbows.

‘Don’t drink it too … fast,’ he says lamely, as Max drains the entire cup in front of him. She holds it out, her cheeks still full to bursting, waggling it demandingly at him as she empties her mouth with an exaggerated gulp. He snatches it and turns back round to fill it again in mutinous silence.

‘It’s New Year’s, Harrington,’ she says, taking the refilled cup with a beatific smile. ‘Drinking’s what it’s _for.’_

‘Not for minors.’

‘_You’re _a minor.’

‘Not for much longer, Mayfield. You, on the other hand, have got a third of your life to live over before the big two-one. Stop _doing _that!’ He says, yanking forcibly at the cup to try and stop her necking it again, but it’s too late, and he just spills punch all over her face.

‘Oops—last time, Steve, I promise,’ she says, laughing, and mopping at her cheeks with her sleeve. Some of her makeup smears, and if anything it makes her look even older, party girl coming undone after a long night. 

Against his better judgement, Steve gives her a second refill.

‘How come you’re not hanging out with Lucas?’ He says to her. ‘It’s nearly twelve.’

‘And why should I be hanging out with my boyfriend tonight more than any other night?’ She says, raising her eyebrows. 

‘Well… so you can kiss.’

‘I can kiss him anytime I want.’

‘But it’s a nice thing to do at New Year’s,’ Steve protests, a little defensive. He likes having someone to hold when the counter hits zero. Last year Billy had even missed the lion’s share of the rager over at Tori Toogood’s place just so Steve could spend the night feeling him up inside the Beamer.

‘Oh yeah? So who’s your midnight kiss? Don’t say Robin, because she’s making out with Tommy H’s girlfriend over by that big houseplant.’ 

‘She’s _what?’ _Steve yanks round, fixing his eyes on the corner where the parlour palm grows. Robin has got Carol Vaughan braced against the wall there. She’s holding one pale thigh hitched over her hip, and Robin’s so tall that Carol’s other foot is barely touching the floor. 

Steve realises with horror that he can only see where _one _of Robin’s hands is. Carol’s face is decidedly flushed, her mouth half-open like she’s a champagne bottle about to come unstoppered.

_‘ROBin!’_ He shouts, scandalised. He’s barely audible above the din, but Robin’s tuned in to always pick up on his voice by this point, so she rears her head back from Carol’s throat to look blearily in his direction. When she sees the look he’s giving her she lets Carol drop, briefly, in order to at least drag the parlour palm in front of them before she insinuates herself back into the curl of Carol’s arms.

‘So?’ Max prompts. ‘You kissing anyone at midnight?’

‘Max, sorry, I really should go and do something about that—’

‘I’ve got a message for you,’ says Max abruptly.

‘Yeah?’ Steve says, distracted. He doesn’t know where Tommy is, but if he sees what’s going on in the living room there will be some kind of fall out, even if the fall out is just him popping a boner and ineptly propositioning Robin for a threesome.

‘Yeah. From Billy.’

Steve snaps his gaze back to her like a magnet to its pole. ‘You’ve spoken to Billy?’ He says, in a hushed voice.

Max nods, and she looks wary. ‘Steve,’ she says, ‘I speak to him every week. He’s always on a payphone,’ she continues, over the hurt, gut-punched noise Steve has just made, ‘but I don’t think he has a landline to call me from even if he wanted to. He sounds okay, though, wherever he is. Not like he’s dying in a crack den or anything.’

‘How long have you—?’

‘Since he left Hawkins,’ she says sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry. He didn’t want me to tell you.’

‘Why? Why wouldn’t he—?’

‘I can’t answer any questions—I don’t _know_. He never really talks to me about you. That doesn’t mean you’re not on his mind, but…’

‘But he told you to give me a message today,’ Steve says, latching onto that. ‘What is it?’

‘He told me to tell you happy new year, Steve,’ she says in a rush, like this is kind of beneath her.

‘That’s it?’

She nods. ‘Do you want me to try and tell him anything back, from you?’

‘Just… tell him how I’m doing. If it seems like he wants to know. How I’m living my life.’

‘What, shacking up with the other video store clerk above the bowling alley?’ Max says dryly.

‘We don’t ‘shack’,’ Steve says. ‘We’re friends. And she is _clearly _fingering Carol Vaughan in my living room right now, so don’t tell Billy I’m involved with her romantically, please.’

‘So is she a lesbian, then? Robin?’

‘Do you think that’s your business, Max?’

‘I’m just asking. Is she a lesbian? Or is she, you know, like you?’ 

‘She’s not like me,’ Steve says.

‘So you guys’ve never…’

_‘No,’ _Steve says. He’s beginning to feel a bit like this is reconnaissance on Max’s part. ‘I haven’t seen anyone, since he’s been gone. You can tell him that as well.’

‘Okay. Anything else?’

‘Tell him I love him,’ Steve says plaintively, his voice breaking, and Max cringes. ‘Or, y’know, that I _miss _him, if it makes you less uncomfortable. Tell him he needs to let me _know_, okay? Tell him that, actually, over anything else. Just tell him to _let me know_.’

‘All right, Steve,’ says Max. ‘I will.’ And then she gives him a long hug, so that he’s holding someone when 1987 crests over them like a breaking wave.

*

Steve gets mail a week later. The sender didn’t pay for postage, which was his first tip as to their identity, but he doesn’t let himself believe it until he has the postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge in his hands, and he can turn it over and see a familiar block script filling up the space.

_Harrington— _(it says)

_I’m nobody’s penpal, so don’t get any stupid ideas here. You got something to say to me, you come say it to my face._

_—B._

And when Steve turns the card on its side, an enormous grin creasing new dimples into his cheeks, he can see that the clean and careful writing perpendicular to the main message is a return address.


End file.
